“Tucker . . . ?” said Morgan.
“When he got passed out in the pansies with the heatstroke.”
“Yes!” said Morgan with obvious relief. “In the village square.”
“Hottest day of the summer it was.”
“I remember.” His moment of relief gave way to his perennial unease. “You wanted to talk to me?”
“Better we talk inside.” She stepped back and gestured them into an unfurnished hallway. On the right side of it there was a door to a small dining room and a stairway up to the second floor. On the left side there was a wide opening into a living room.
“You go right on in. Don’t pay no mind to Vaughn,” she said, tilting her head toward a man in full hunting camos sitting in a wheelchair in front of a picture window at the far end of the room, “and he won’t pay no mind to you.” The window provided a panoramic view of the lake.
“Vaughn,” she added, “is a lifelong duck hunter.”
She led them to the other end of the room, where four armchairs formed a loose semicircle in front of a three-cushion couch. The center cushion was occupied by a sleeping gray dog whose little legs seemed inadequate for his large body. Ruby-June sat next to him and rested her arm on him as if he were part of the couch.
Morgan took the chair farthest from her, Gurney the one closest.
“So.” Morgan put on a smile. “What did you want to tell me?”
“I spoke to a man the other night, a man who I’ve since been told is dead. Not just dead now, but dead when I spoke to him.”
“Do you know who this man was?”
“Course I do. Otherwise, how would I know he was dead?”
“Can you give me his name?”
“That’s what I’m wanting to tell you. It was Billy Tate.”
“And when exactly did you see him?”
“It was just about twenty-four hours after he fell off Hilda’s roof and died. Course, I didn’t know that when I spoke to him, or I can’t think that I would have done so.”
“What time was it? Do you recall?”
“I’d say two in the morning.”
“Where was this?”
“Out on the road. Tucker here wanted to take care of business.” She scratched the head of the dog on the cushion next to her. “We were on our side of the road, but Tucker can be particular, and he wanted to go to the other side. We was making our way across—Tucker’s not so quick on his feet these days—when Billy come driving along. He slowed way down, letting us pass.”
“You say you spoke to him?”
“I did. I said, ‘Good morning, Billy.’ ’Cause it was rightly morning, being after midnight. He passed by real slow, almost stopped. ‘Ruby-June,’ he said, kinda hoarse like. Something wrong with his throat, like he was sick.”
“And then, after he said your name . . . ?”
“He drove on down the road.”
Morgan looked at Gurney.
Gurney asked, “What direction was he going?”
“Toward Harrow Hill.”
“What kind of car was he driving?”
“I don’t know cars. Kind of square like. Some kind of Jeep, I think? Used to drive around town in it. Orange color.”
“Billy’s window was open?”
“Course it was. We wasn’t shouting at each other through the glass.”
Gurney smiled. “Sounds like you’ve known him a long time.”
“Since he was being raised up. Crazy boy from the beginning, which you can’t blame him for being. You’d be plenty crazy, too, if your stepmama was Darlene Tate.”
“What was the problem with Darlene?”
“I’d rather not say. To talk about it, I’d have to think about it, wouldn’t I? And thinking about it would dirty my mind.”
“Fair enough. You said that Billy sounded hoarse. Do you remember how he looked?”
“Same as always. Wearing that thing on his head. Like he’d been wearing it for years. I venture he did it because it made him look like, you know what I’m saying, like a bad boy. Which most folks hereabouts would say he was. But maybe he was just hiding, you know what I mean?”
“Tell me.”
“Hiding from the prying eyes of the world. Hiding from the judgment of them that’s always judging. Hiding what he done with Darlene.”
Gurney nodded. “So you don’t think Billy Tate was a bad person?”
“Not deep-down bad. Marched to his own drummer, for sure. And he did have a temper. Didn’t take crap, that’s a fact. A fierce streak in that boy. And now everyone’s saying he died the night before I saw him out on that road—just thinking that in my mind gives me a cold feeling. Right now, sir, I feel a shiver right through me.”
“I can understand that,” said Gurney. “Have you told anyone you saw him that night?”
“No, sir! Folks already think Vaughn and I are long gone around the bend. No way I’m handing them more ammunition.”
Gurney nodded sympathetically. “Is there anything else you want to tell us?”
“Yes, sir. More like a question, though. I’m talking here with a troubling notion in my mind—that the Billy Tate I saw was what they call on the TV shows ‘the walking dead.’ Like the horror movies, which is not what I truly believe. But I’ve been told by reputable people with their heads on straight that Billy Tate is dead. So, that’s my question to you. Is that boy dead, alive, or somewhere in between?”
Gurney sat back in his chair and looked over at Morgan. It was up to him to decide how much to reveal.
“Well, Ruby, I’d say we’re currently of the opinion that he may be alive.”
Ruby-June Hooper smiled broadly for the first time since they arrived. “Thank you, sir! That’s a trouble off my mind.” She gave the dog an enthusiastic scratching behind the ears. “You hear that, Tucker? Mama’s still got her marbles. Ain’t nobody carting us off to the loony bin. Not just yet.”
Morgan handed her his card. “If you see him again, Ruby, let us know as fast as you can. That’s my personal number. Day or night.”
“I thank you. If Vaughn had the slightest idea about anything, he’d thank you, too.”
On their way out through the thicket, Morgan wondered aloud if he’d revealed too much to Ruby. Too little? Should he have asked her to keep the information to herself? Gurney said that it probably didn’t matter—which seemed neither to surprise nor reassure Morgan. Back at the road, while Morgan remained absorbed in second-guessing his response, Gurney filled Slovak in on what Ruby-June had told them.
Slovak’s eyes filled with speculative excitement. “So, Tate has a friendly exchange with her, then drives another mile down the road, runs into another local lady who just happens to be out, doing God knows what, at two in the morning. This time he gets out of his car, cuts her throat, and dumps her in a drainage ditch—on his way to kill Angus Russell!”
“That’s one way of putting it together. What information do you have on this new victim?”
“Mary Kane, age seventy, retired school librarian. Lived in a small cottage, across from the first turnoff to Harrow Hill. Former gatehouse of the lakeside estate behind it.”
“Any estimated time of death?”
Slovak ran his hand back over the bristly red hair on the top of his head. “I’d guess at least two days. Classic signs of early-stage decomp. Fallow passed by a couple of minutes ago on his way there. He’ll probably give us a tighter time window. If it’s between two and three days, that would line up with the Russell murder—and be consistent with what the Hooper woman just told you.”
Classic signs of early-stage decomp sounded to Gurney like Slovak’s jargony effort to sound more inured to this sort of thing than he actually was. The sight of a two-day-old corpse in a ditch would leave any young detective unnerved. The odor alone was gut-wrenching.